Quoting from a blog post I wrote [1] which included a note on this documentary and why I think it made an overly positive case for Vipassana and its effects on

Quoting from a blog post I wrote [1] which included a note on this documentary and why I think it made an overly positive case for Vipassana and its effects on prisoners in Tihar Jail: > There is a popular documentary on YouTube called “Doing Time, Doing Vipassana” on the introduction of Vipassana into Tihar Jail (probably the most populated prison in the world with a current population of 17130 prisoners), and how Vipassana improved several measures of psychological well-being among the inmates that undertook it — things like anxiety, depression, sense of alienation from mainstream society, etc. This has become such a success story for Goenka Vipassana that Kiran Bedi — Inspector General of Delhi Prisons at the time — is invited to speak at major public events organised by the Goenka Vipassana organisation. Having become a Vipassana enthusiast herself, she praises it freely in TV interviews and even the odd TED talk. > But to me this is yet another example of bad science in which meditation seems to get a free pass. Introducing Vipassana was not the only improvement Bedi made to Tihar; she arranged vocational training for prisoners, introduced Yoga classes, organised sports events and celebrations for religious festivals, established petition boxes and went on daily inspections, interacting with prisoners and listening to their problems. Just like patients who feel better after homeopathic treatment, what may have mattered more to prisoners was that Bedi was actually trying to help them; they knew this and therefore already expected things to improve in their lives. Also, there seems to have been no control group in the Vipassana Tihar research. Prisoners who volunteered to learn Vipassana were segregated from the rest and may have been treated better overall. There should have been a control group that was also segregated and in all respects treated the same as the Vipassana group except for the Vipassana part. [1] https://karanvas.com/posts/adventures-at-the-vipassana-enlightenment-factory/ https://karanvas.com/posts/adventures-at-the-vipassana-enlig...